Quote Originally Posted by MLTSPCS View Post
I have been a Union employee since 1998 and I can tell you firsthand that I am by no means rich. The Unions are necessary in many situations to keep greedy companies from not paying workers or denying or limiting benefits. I work 7 day swing-shift in my current job as a chemical operator, and have been for the past 12 years. I work nights, weekends, holidays, double shifts and such. If my relief takes a vacation and nobody wants the overtime I am looking at 16 hours. If I'm scheduled the next day I have 8 hours to shower, get home, eat, sleep, prepare for the next shift (which could be another 16), and be back to work. Take the Union out of the equation and let the company have their way and I'm making wages that 16 year old, pot-smoking, no bill or responsibility having, is making down the road at McD's or somewhere that doesn't require education and/or drug tests. The Unions are the furthest from being the problem with the economy. I get decent pay, decent benefits, pay the highest dues in our union, and pay all my taxes. The company is profittable and doing well even during these trying times. How am I, or any of the others in the Unions, a drain? Take away the wages and benefit perks and see how much turnover we have in this 24/7/365 chemical operation.

And believe it or not, most of my views are of the conservative sort. Union work doesn't decide your morals or values as many seem to believe.
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I suspect there are a good many folks who enjoy this site who are either union members or supporters of trade unions that do not take part in discussions of this type because it seems the regular posters are of the opinion that unions are all evil entities of some kind and you usually end up on the light end of the seesaw... All union members are not the greatest folks you ever met but most union members know they have a job to do and as long as the company they work for follow the contract they signed with them, they do the job they get paid to do... There wouldn't be a need for unions anywhere if you were always treated with respect, had a safe environment to work in and weren't expected to "get the job done" regardless of the condition of the machinery you are operating ( guards missing or broken and a host of other things ) and were paid a wage with which you could actually take care of your family without handouts from social programs... I believe OSHA came into the picture some years back and took up the fight to create safer work environments and they were the evil doers for some years to follow... Without trade unions, we have pay scales that are low enough that folks owe no taxes at the end of the year, some of these folks actually qualify for food stamps in a lot of these satellite plants that have sprang up in the last years ... I have heard some of these same folks bad mouth unions all the while they are earning 9 or 10 dollars an hour and blaming union wages for the high cost of the things they need such as food ... Everybody doesn't end up with a college education or a management position of some kind, that shouldn't mean he/she doesn't deserve a fair enough wage so he/she can live without government handouts.